COMMENTARY : Hey, Want to Hear My Life Story? : Life on the solo circuit means examining your navel, your inner self and much more (or less).

Solo performance mania has hit Los Angeles. The trendiest acting classes are swerving into autobiographical storytelling; crowds flock to UCLA Extension and Highways solo workshops; new one-person shows spring up weekly. Contrary to what you might think, these are not all actors looking for a showcase. They’re just ordinary people who have amazing stories to tell--their own.

This hit home recently when a successful TV writer informed me she was quitting it all to write a one-woman show. For the stage. For one of L.A.’s many sub-100-seat theaters. Why? Raking in big bucks on shows like “Thunder Alley” and “Full House” had grown stale: “It’s so formulaic. I want to tell my own story in my own words.” What story? “About my divorce, breakdown and being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.”

Years ago, such a project might have exuded that certain Hindenburg quality. After all, my friend has no performance experience to speak of--and this is a one-woman show. But these days, the rules are new. She might not fail. On the contrary, I see a possible Whole Life Times profile in her future, healthy 12-step group-ticket sales, perhaps even the founding of her own performance project called “Women’s Voices Now.”

The fact is, the “success” of much solo performance in L.A. depends more on how well it targets an oppressed group (“Latino lesbians,” “HIV-positives,” “angry Asians,” “the Jews”) than on whether it’s very good theater. And maybe that’s not all bad.

It’s certainly not that surprising, when you think about it. Consider the one-person show in the abstract. It’s the opposite of theatrical. It’s presentational; it has no conflict; no second character will ever enter on light, refreshing footsteps. It resists being dressed up with fancy sets, sound, lighting, and--God forbid--video. Because these great sensory rushes always end in the inevitable crash . . . when the audience is forced to return to the grim reality that is you, you, you.

But what does one gain? The illusion, at least, of honesty. Particularly if the solo performer is not polished, or tainted by “Star Search” smoothness. In fact, soon expertise starts to seem the opposite of cultural authenticity. When avant-garde doyenne Rachel Rosenthal selects performers for her solo workshops, she often says she prefers people with a minimum of experience.

Why, finally, this emphasis on the unvarnished story? Because the America of the ‘90s is a great melting pot. And so, therefore, should be its theater. We’ve already wasted too much time, goes the argument, listening to the same old stories by the same old people (a k a white heterosexual males). We want to hear new stories by all the new people (a k a women, minorities, etc.).

We do not want these stories watered down (e.g., nested within complex four-act absurdist plays). If oppressed groups are to be given a “voice,” let them speak to us directly, via autobiographical monologue. Witness the recurring L.A. Women’s Theatre Festival. It features no actual plays, only solo performers doing monologues. Not very happy monologues at that.

Of course, I speak about all of this as one of the guilty. I just recently trotted out my own new autobiographical monologue at “SOLO/LA,” billed as L.A.’s first-ever solo theater festival.

Actually, while “Aliens in America” was based on my Chinese-German family, it was by no means totally autobiographical. One story was fictional; a second concerned a journey to a city that doesn’t exist; the third centered on dialogue that never happened. Because of such liberties, I didn’t think it would be accurate to refer to my “I” narrator as “Sandra.”

However, as my dramaturge Tom Bryant wisely pointed out, audiences today are used to solo performance as cultural autobiography. It would be simpler to present it as all my life.

Do I feel guilty about lying? Not at all!

Heck, I feel like I’ve struggled enough--not with life, but with this whole solo performance thing. It took me years to figure out what my TV-writing friend has grasped so instantly.

I began as a solo performer back in 1987, a time when the tsunami of multiculturalism was beginning its swell. It seemed a propitious time to be a Chinese-German female. (What could be more multicultural--a “fresher voice”--than that?) Lucrative arts grants, loving reviews and huge black-clad and ethnic-earringed audiences would be sure to follow.

With a typical lack of savvy, however, I chose to work as a piano act. A “funny” piano act. Think Sino-Germanic Victor Borge wanna-be raving in a Valley accent. My joy was parlor jokes so obscure and Eurocentric one got a headache just hearing them: “The Education of Henry Adams: The Musical!” (I was an English grad student at the time, my heroes were Adams, Melville and Twain. “White guys? Why?” I ask now, older and wiser.)

It was a kind of wild-eyed, across-the-board diversity that came up zero in the eyes of grants panels, critics, downtown arts festivals. My “fans”--a strange, small, oddly eclectic group--just got stranger and smaller as I wobbled eclectically forward. I wasn’t hip to the idea of solo performer as leader of her own sociopolitical constituency. I just loved what I loved--’50s musicals, ‘70s film references, Noel Coward-ish patter.

A light bulb finally went off in my head at a West Hollywood benefit in summer, 1990. At the time, I was doing a one-woman show called “ShiPOOpeE! The American Musical Deconstructed.” “Shipoopee” was a joyous nonsensical cry Buddy Hackett yelled in the film of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.” “Shipoopee” was the catchword for my whole carefree performing aesthetic.

My “act” involved my leading a kind of post-structuralist sing-along of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” Don’t ask. It was a piece that had pretty much flopped with button-down avant-gardes, a k a people who dolefully scrape at electric cellos. But I was not prepared for the response I got here.

“Oh what a beau-ti-ful morn-ing!” I warbled nervously.

Without missing a beat, the crowd thundered back, like a chorus of angels: “Oh what a beau-ti-ful day!”

It was thrilling to find “my people”: gay men partying in biker’s caps and leather chaps. Sadly, of course, it was the wrong demographic. I was a Sino-German gal doing show tunes, a drag act locked in a heterosexual body. In the final analysis, the drag community wouldn’t really want me--but nor would the Asians.

Since then, I’ve started telling stories within the pre-approved genre that fits me--Asian American, second-generation immigrant, etc. It keeps me alive in that cultural marketplace that is college programs, theater festivals, etc. And, of course, there are a lot of worthwhile stories to tell here. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t like to sometimes whistle a show tune.